In 1981 the legislature enshrined Earl Campbell as an Official State Hero Of Texas. Only three other favorite sons—Davy Crockett, Stephen F. Austin, and Sam Houston—had already been given that honor, so the proclamation was a good sign of how well-known and popular Campbell was at the time. Tyler Rose was one of the best high school football players the state had ever seen. He won the first Heisman trophy for the University of Texas and was named NFL player of the year three times with the Houston Oilers. Now I sit across a table from him and ponder the bygone years. Campbell has gained a few pounds and inches around the middle, but he still has the bull neck and shoulders that look like they belong on a pipeline. He has a big scar between his eyebrows, a broad, flattened nose, and a slightly drooping left eyelid. His face looks almost the same, but now he has an oval frame of hair and a silver beard.
He hands me a press release about the bankruptcy of his Austin food company, which he started in 1990, and a restaurant he opened in 1999. He seems eager to get it over with. A Flatonia sausage maker has taken on his debts and put him back on the road to sell for the new company, Earl Campbell Meat Products. He’s a businessman gone bust, starting over at 46. And that’s just part of his run of bad luck. “When a guy shakes your hand, he doesn’t know you have arthritis, and he’ll squeeze it hard,” he says, showing me that he can’t make a fist with either hand. This is why he doesn’t wear any of the big rings that show off his Heisman trophy or other football honors, not even a wedding band. ‘Hey, ow, wait a minute!’”.
Coach Darrell Royal, who used to coach UT, once said of his star runner, “He don’t take no prisoners.” Campbell had breakaway speed and a dancer’s balance and agility. He was never mean on the field, but the game played best when he lowered his head and went straight at people who were trying to tackle him. He was the essence of football: one on one, its irresistible force. But now he finds himself a casualty of his own style of play. They told him that the only way to fix his right knee is to replace it with a fake one, but he doesn’t want to have surgery. His arches hurt. He can’t walk long distances. He has trouble climbing stairs. But Campbell doesn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. “It’s like Merle Haggard said,” he drawls, paraphrasing the songwriter. “If anyone says I don’t care about mud, they damn sure told you wrong,” ”.
I ask him about the time he ran over Bevo, the UT Longhorn steer mascot, to lighten the mood. That collision occurred in 1977 in a game against the University of Houston. Campbell broke free after catching a pitchout and aimed for the corner of the end zone. He then charged headfirst after scoring. “I hit him in the left flank,” he says. “Bevo went down, a cameraman went down, and I did too. The big steer didn’t fall over all the way, but the Longhorn stumbled and may have gone down on his haunches. Badly startled, he swung far around, yanking his handler along.
“Before I knew it, I was all up on Bevo,” Campbell recalls. “But I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t stop. ” He looks me over for a moment, then chuckles. “He said, ‘Moooo. ’”.
The seventh of eleven children, he grew up in a weathered plank house among rose fields outside Tyler. Earl’s dad picked roses and worked nights at a convenience store. He died of a heart attack when Earl was eleven years old. The kid was taller, stronger, and faster than the other kids he played with. He was also bossy sometimes. He quit his high school team briefly when a coach benched him over a disciplinary matter. He looked up to Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus, and he really wanted to play middle linebacker. When a new coach switched him to running back, he tried to stop the change during practice. “Just for fun, I rolled up to that line of scrimmage and dropped the ball every time,” he says. “A coach I was close to called me over and said, ‘I gotta make a deal with you. You hold on to that football, and we’ll let you play both ways. ’ After that, I did. ”.
Campbell led the newly integrated John Tyler High to an undefeated season and a state championship in 1973. He went from being unknown to becoming Texas’ most famous high school running back since Doak Walker. “Everybody knew he was gonna be a great one,” says Royal. “Everybody. “The integration of sports at UT was still a touchy subject, and some people saw Royal’s signing of the high school star as a turning point. When Royal went to see Tyler, he was able to connect with Campbell by telling him stories about his childhood and a brave, poor grandmother. The coach and the player became friends. Campbell would hang out with the coach and his wife at Royal’s house, where he would lie down on the carpet and talk. And when Royal retired in 1976, the coach said that Campbell was the only player from Texas who stayed for the whole news.
He was a showcase student, but life at the University sometimes made him feel lonely and isolated. His high school girlfriend, Reuna, loaned him money for fun times a lot. They would marry in 1982. He set his mind to earning a degree, and the C’s that dominated his transcript were hard-won. Campbell always chose a desk in the front row, right in front of the teacher, because he knew he would stand out. He hardly ever missed a lecture. He would wake up other students in the athletic dorm in the morning and drag them out of bed to go to class.
Campbell had known Royal’s successor, Fred Akers, as a backfield coach when he was a freshman. But he was shocked when Akers called him into his office and told him to lose 25 pounds so he could be the main man in charge of a new crime. Campbell worked out by running, punching a bag, and sitting in a steam room until he passed out. He lost 220 pounds. A short jersey flaunting his trim midriff became one of his hallmarks that fall. In 1977, he ran for 1,744 yards and scored the most points in the country. At a Heisman trophy ceremony in New York, Jesse Jackson and O.J. Simpson led the way in honoring his late parents. J. Simpson.
Bud Adams was the owner of the NFL’s Houston Oilers. One thing he did right was get his counterpart in Tampa Bay to trade Houston the first pick in the 1978 draft. It was Bum Phillips’ turn to be the Oilers’ head coach, and he thought Campbell looked normal in his first training camp. Phillips was a folksy journeyman defensive coordinator. “I never practiced good,” Campbell tells me. “They called me Brick Hands ‘cause I couldn’t catch passes, and I never could lift weights. Bum told us one day, ‘After practice I want all the rookies in the weight room, lifting. ’ Bum always called me E. C. Next day he called me out and said, ‘E. C. , did you hear me yesterday when I said all the rookies gotta lift weights?’.
“I was always afraid that if a running back lifted weights he wouldn’t be loose,” Campbell says now. “But I didn’t tell Bum that. Those were just my beliefs. He told her, “Well, I’ll have to fine you $5,000 if you don’t, so you better do something now.” ’ After that I’d mess around in there, but I didn’t really lift weights. I didn’t like it. ”.
When Campbell joined them, the Oilers were a talented team dogged by past failures. Any doubts about how valuable their first-round draft pick were went away in the first quarter of a game against the playoff-tested Los Angeles Rams. Campbell has bowlegs, and in his tailback’s stance, he planted his feet wide, hands on his knees. He looked like a miniature tank. He took a pitchout and kicked off to the left. He didn’t like what he saw because he changed direction and weight, lifting his right foot off the ground. The Rams had a proud star linebacker named Isiah Robertson, and he had a straight shot at Campbell. The running back somehow got the strength of his huge legs together in two steps and slammed into Robertson’s chest like a rhino charging. The linebacker landed on his back. Campbell sped through heavy traffic, waving the ball around with his left hand while trying to land a stiff-arm with his right. He threw it with the force and shock of a George Foreman jab, while a Ram tried to stay behind him and got hit, ripping off his jersey.
Campbell looks sad when I bring up that play. He sighs and says, “I don’t talk about that play much. It was a fair game, but I made it clear to Isiah Robertson that I was just doing my job and he was just doing his, and it wasn’t personal. Sometimes the media can take a play and run it over and over so much. I think that damaged his life a little bit. ”.
That night in November 1978, Campbell ran for four touchdowns and 199 yards as the Oilers beat the strong Miami Dolphins 35–30. This was the start of the sea of powder blue pom-poms and the echoed chaos in the Astrodome. Howard Cosell later said it was the best of all of ABC’s Monday night games. That performance made Texas famous all over the country—Campbell was going to be one of the all-time greats. It’s hard to explain how crazy Houston was about its football heroes back then because it was so short-lived. As the years went on, the Oilers built a record as such heartbreakers and losers that Adams’ move of the team to Tennessee in 1997 was hardly felt. ) He fired Bum Phillips in 1980, and just like that, Luv Ya Blue was over. Campbell banged on through the Oilers’ decline, losing a step or two and taking a beating. As the coach of the New Orleans Saints, Phillips traded for Campbell in mid-1984. Campbell didn’t deliver, and Phillips again got fired. Campbell came to team camp in 1986 in great shape, but one night he told a coach, “Listen, I’m not really interested in football.” ” He’d given the pros eight years, and that was enough. He made calls to alert his mom and his two father figures, Royal and Phillips. Suddenly he was on a plane, going home to Texas. “I told this stewardess, ‘Bring me a six-pack of beer,’” Campbell recalls.
“I never looked back,” he says. “That’s why I got those beers, to help me keep it right in my mind. I didn’t look out the window at New Orleans or nothing else. I looked straight ahead, thinking, ‘I am an ex-football player. I got a college education, and I’m gonna do my thing. ’”.
But of course he does look back. According to the press release about his bankruptcy, Earl Campbell was an NFL Hall of Fame running back who was known for being able to take a direct hit, get back on his feet, and keep going. In football it’s called ‘yards after contact. ’ Now Campbell is displaying the same ability on the playing field of big business. ”.
The allusion is to Campbell’s greatest hit, or at least his favorite. In 1979, on the goal line against the Oakland Raiders, he drove off-tackle. All-Pro defensive back Jack Tatum, who was known as “the Assassin” for how hard he tackled, got down on Campbell and hit him with all of his weight and power. Houston quarterback Dan Pastorini said the noise of their collision was like a train wreck. Tatum fell on his backside, stunned. It took a lot of strength in Campbell’s back, hamstrings, and will to get him back up, and he staggered in for the touchdown. “After that game, Jack came up to me and told me, ‘I gave you the best I had” ’ I told him, ‘That’s the best I got too. ’”.
Campbell knows his physical condition today is the accumulation of such impacts. “For a long time everything was still attached pretty good,” he says. But after all those years of hitting and knocking, there are some things you shouldn’t do to that body. And as you age, it comes back to haunt you and say, “Hey, remember me? What you did to me? That’s real, man.” ’”.
And he has learned that force of will can come up short too. For years his line of sausages, sauces, and other barbecue products seemed to thrive. Then in October 1999 he and his partners opened his Austin restaurant, Earl Campbell’s, on Sixth Street. The place was well furnished with Texas decor and memorabilia, including his Heisman trophy. The food got decent reviews, and the restaurant usually had a good crowd at lunchtime. But costs are high on Sixth Street, and it’s not a good place for dinner sales because kids are always looking for alcohol, music, and a good time. In February, brown paper was put over the windows, and the landlord told everyone that the restaurant was locked up because the rent wasn’t paid. Campbell’s name was on the failure.
“I don’t know that business,” he says of the restaurant trade, shaking his head. “This was the first time in my life I hit a wall or something I couldn’t do.” ” So he had to seek protection in bankruptcy court. In business it happens all the time. It’s just not supposed to happen to an Official State Hero of Texas.
He says, “I went to church one Sunday, and our reverend said, ‘When you’re in the pits of life, God knows.'” You might have forgotten something, so He’ll let you go down there. But He’ll come get you out of that pit. He just says, “Step,” and you rise on up. ’ I think that guy knew I needed to hear that. ”.
Dann Janecka, a friend of Campbell’s for a long time, helped him start over and get back to what he does best: convincing stores to stock his line of food products. And Campbell’s spirits have rebounded. He works as a special assistant to the president and helps entertain recruits’ families at UT games. He also gives advice to Longhorn athletes. He’s still married to the woman who caught his eye when he was in the ninth grade. “We’ve been together ‘most all our lives,” he says, then tilts his head and smiles. “It ain’t been easy. “He loves his sons very much. One is a freshman in college and runs track; the other is a freshman in high school and loves football.” He talks on the phone to Royal and sees him at games. He goes fishing and plays dominoes with Bum Phillips. Phillips told the crowd at Campbell’s induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1991, “You can watch him in the movies.” “I can watch him in my memory. ”.
Campbell knows that nostalgia can be a cage in the past. Not all of his decisions have been wise, and some memories hurt like his hands and knees. “That number twenty on the University of Texas, he’s no more,” he says. “That number thirty-four on the Houston Oilers, he’s gone too. But the guy who wore those numbers, he’s still the same. God just gave him something else to do. I’m nothing but a simple man. ”.
The Rise and Fall of Earl Campbell’s Sausage Empire
In Texas, Earl Campbell is football royalty. The Tyler native won the Heisman Trophy with the University of Texas Longhorns before becoming an NFL star with the Houston Oilers. After retiring from football in 1985 Campbell looked to build on his fame by launching a food business. In 1990, he founded Earl Campbell Meat Products, Inc. to sell Texas-style smoked sausages and barbecue products.
For over 20 years, Earl Campbell Sausage thrived as a beloved brand in its home state. But in 2021 the company abruptly declared bankruptcy – a shocking downfall for the Texas football icon’s business. What led to the demise of Earl Campbell’s sausage empire?
Initial Success in Texas
When Earl Campbell Sausage started out in the early 1990s, the company focused on Central Texas, selling to local supermarkets and restaurants. Campbell’s sausages quickly gained a following in the Austin area for their quality and bold Texas flavors like spicy cheddar and jalapeño.
As the “Earl Campbell’s Smoked Sausage” brand expanded across Texas, Campbell became a familiar face to grocery shoppers statewide. His company continued growing regionally and got an added boost in 1999 when Campbell opened Earl Campbell’s BBQ restaurant in Austin.
Nationwide Growth and Changing Consumer Habits
Buoyed by success in Texas, Earl Campbell Sausage began expanding distribution across the U.S., establishing itself as a national brand. However, as the company grew, some troubling signs emerged.
Health-conscious consumers were increasingly wary of highly processed foods like sausages. The rise of low-carb diets in the 2000s also shifted preferences away from Campbell’s indulgent, carb-heavy smoked sausage recipes.
Facing Changing Times
While still popular in Texas, Earl Campbell Sausage struggled to stand out from national competitors as consumer habits evolved. Campbell’s Austin restaurant also faced challenges, closing in 2001 due to high costs and low neighborhood traffic.
Though the core sausage business stayed afloat, increased competition and the health food movement limited growth potential. Earl Campbell Sausage refocused as a regional brand, but revenues declined over most of the 2000s.
Pandemic Devastation
In 2020, COVID-19 delivered a death blow to the struggling company. With demand plummeting from restaurants and stadiums, Earl Campbell Sausage took a massive hit.
The Austin restaurant permanently closed in early 2021 after falling behind on rent. In April 2021, the parent company filed for bankruptcy, unable to recover from pandemic losses.
While the virus sped up the company’s demise, its downfall stemmed from deeper issues. Relying on Campbell’s enduring fame in Texas, the brand failed to sufficiently adapt to changing consumer preferences over the years.
The Earl Campbell Brand Today
Though the bankruptcy spelled the end of the original business, the Earl Campbell’s brand lives on. A Texas meat processor purchased the rights to Earl Campbell’s products and recipes after the bankruptcy.
Campbell himself remains involved in the reborn Earl Campbell Meat Co., determined to keep his sausage empire going. However, stiff competition and ongoing shifts in consumer habits could hinder the rebranded company’s success.
Lessons Learned
The rise and fall of Earl Campbell Sausage offers some cautionary lessons for brands, even those built on celebrity:
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Fame alone can’t sustain a company long-term – Quality products that meet evolving consumer demand are essential
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Nostalgia has limits – Brands must stay fresh and relevant as tastes change
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Regional loyalty has little national impact – Breaking out requires broad mainstream appeal
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Relying on past brand strength is risky – Consistent marketing innovation and reinvention is key
For Texas legend Earl Campbell, his rollercoaster ride in the food business shows how on-field acclaim failed to guarantee lasting success off the field. While fans still reminisce about his football glory days, as a businessman he faced the same difficult marketplace realities as any brand. After COVID hastened its decline, the future of Campbell’s rebranded sausage company remains very uncertain.
Earl Campbell Sausage Story
FAQ
Who makes Earl Campbell sausage?
What happened to Earl Campbell?
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What year did Earl Campbell retire?
What happened to Earl Campbell’s business?
Earl Campbell handed me a press release detailing the bankruptcy of his Austin food company, which he founded in 1990, and a restaurant he opened in 1999. His debts have been taken on by a sausage manufacturer in Flatonia, and he is now back on the road selling for the new partnership, Earl Campbell Meat Products.
What is Earl Campbell smoked sausage?
Earl Campbell’s Original Smoked Sausage has been the MVP of backyard grilling, tailgating, and kitchen meal prep for decades. Choose this tender, juicy smoked sausage for any meal when flavor matters. Add sausage to scrambled eggs on toast for a breakfast the kids will actually eat.
How good was Earl Campbell in 1980?
Amazingly, Campbell’s production continued to improve in his third season, the best of his eight-year NFL career. In the 1980 campaign, Earl Campbell led the league in carries with 373, scored 13 touchdowns, and rushed for 1,934 yards. He had four games of 200 yards or better.
When did Earl Campbell retire?
Campbell was a rarity at running back as he never shied away from contact, and in fact, he preferred to be the one delivering the punishment at impact. That style took its toll on Campbell, and after just eight seasons, he retired in 1985. What happened to Earl Campbell since he retired, and what is his net worth? RELATED: